


pomegranate & asphodel

by inwhispersandscreams



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 15:14:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inwhispersandscreams/pseuds/inwhispersandscreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a retelling of the hades/persephone myth, from the viewpoint of persephone herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. descent.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladylionheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylionheart/gifts).



Where she dances, flowers grow.

Violets and crocuses, irises and hyacinths, all bloom in the places where her feet touch the earth. It is not so with the nymphs that keep her company, though they are embodiments of nature; nature responds to her light touch alone out of them, the shells of seeds cracking open and life straining to reach towards her. It has always been this way with her, but Persephone is a daughter of the goddess of the harvest and it shows in her. She is rosy cheeked, bright eyed, with flower blooms braided into wild hair that has grown to touch the back of her thighs. Her skin is tanned by warm sunlight, and her limbs are adorned by bracelets and rings of plaited grass and flowers, made by nymph companions and her own nimble hands. Life itself yearns to touch her, to exist in her wake, and why not? Persephone is youth and life and growth, the very sight of her enough to inspire the lust of all things, for who does not desire life, as wild and free as it is within a goddess whose very touch inspires sleeping life to awaken?

The world blooms and bursts with life in her shadow, and for a man who lives in a realm of dead and dying things, the sight of her is a heady thing.

Persephone rests in meadows, far away from gleaming eyes. She is a maiden yet, despite the intentions of the gods about her, her virtue protected by her mother’s watchful, protective gaze. She gathers flowers and eats fruits that burst with flavour and juices in her mouth, passing her days in a warm haze of sunlight with the scent of flowers permeating the air around her. This, alone, is what she knows. She knows flowers blooming and the sensation of sunlight warming flesh. She knows the smell of flowers in bloom but not any other. She knows only the sight of meadows and the company of nymphs and all else is foreign to her, unknown and a mystery. She has not seen the cities that her cousins call their own, and though she makes tiny clay men from the earth, she has never seen hide nor hair of one. Her knowledge is limited to what she has seen and what her company of nymphs tell her of. Her world is limited to the boundaries of her meadow. She knows there is more, but she has not ever seen it.

But she wants to.

 

He comes to her on a day much like any of the others in her life, excepting the strange new plant in her meadow. It grows tall, with white flowers marked by red lines that run through the petals. The stems are grey, tinged with purple, a strangely muted plant in colour compared to the ones that have always surrounded her. Never before has a new flower grown in her meadow that she has not already seen, and the mystery of the flower draws her to it. Her nymphs are unaware – they gaily dance and laugh, frivolous creatures prone to happiness and giddy laughter rather than any other mood. Not one calls out to stop her wondering hand from wandering too close to this strange new plant – not one calls out to stop her hand from plucking the flower from the earth so she might add it to the circlet her nymphs are making to crown her with. As its roots are torn from the sheltering earth, the ground by her feet shudders and opens, a great mouth appearing to a cavern. Flames flicker deep within its depth, illuminating the dark expanse of the cave. Her nymphs shriek at the shaking of the ground, at the earth that fell away by the young goddess to reveal this cavern, half crafted flower chains falling carelessly to the ground.

But Persephone only notices the man deep within the cavern, half cloaked in the darkness, half illuminated by the flickering torch light. His face is serious and still, eyes burning with an emotion that Persephone cannot describe. He stands still – does not reach for her, does not beckon for her – simply stands, waits, looks at her with burning, serious eyes. Her nymphs have scattered, back for their trees, gone to look for the presence of her mother, but the man is there and his eyes call to her.

She places one bare foot into the cavern, feels the earth underneath a hardy, dirty foot, and then another. The strange new plant blooms in the wake of her steps as she makes her way into the shadows and towards the man.

“Who are you?” she asks. The strange plant hangs light in her grasp as she studies the man’s face. Fair skin and dark hair, harsh angular lines in his face; he has not the soft way of her clay figures of man or the round, youthful faces of the nymphs. He does not answer, but his hands reach for her own to study the plant in her grasp. There is silence as she watches him with wide, questioning eyes, and he studies the plant in her grasp.

“I see you found my plant.” His voice is low and smooth. She had expected it to be clipped and angular to match the bones of his face, but it is not. “It is called asphodel, if you have never seen its likeness before.”

“Asphodel.” Persephone turns the word over in her mind, testing its weight on her tongue. It feels strange to her, but she embraces the strangeness, the learning of something new. This is something from beyond her meadow, this man is something from beyond her knowledge. Her breath comes short as her eyes flick between the strange plant, between his _asphodel_ , and the man who brought it to her attention. _Are there more plants?_ she wants to ask. _Are there more plants with stalks as grey as ghosts?_ She has only come across green stems and vibrant flowers, lilies floating in water and orchids that bloom with more colour than she had known possible.

“Show me more.”

The man blinks, and then his mouth turns upwards into a smile as he offers her his hand. Delicately, she places her own in his, willing her heart to stop racing in newfound excitement that urges her to race forwards. “Whatever my lady desires,” he replies, and leads her deeper into the earth.

She follows, and a trail of asphodel marks their passage.

 

He leads her to a black palace that gleams. Earth surrounds them, and dark twisting rivers flow through this strange new place. It is unlike her meadow – colours here, though rich, are deep and earthy, the contrast between them more subtle, excepting the growth of asphodel which stands like ghosts and the image of bright moonlight against the dark earth around it. There is so much to see, but the man pulls her forward, into the dark, gleaming palace where the touch of her feet to the ground no longer births new life.

She knows him now, though she has heard only stories of him before this point. Hades, Lord of the Underworld, brother to the King of Gods. She had expected his realm to be full of decay, but as she glances back to see the path they have taken, flowers have still grown where her feet have touched the earth. If this is the land of the dead and the dying, life is stronger than its pull to decay. Her skin does not blacken with his touch, her breath does not shorten with approaching death. If he is Lord of the Dead, and his realm is of Death, then it does not make him Death itself, or her heritage as daughter of the harvest grants her immunity to it.

“I know who you are,” she tells him as he leads her through the palace. His attendants bow to them as they pass, to _her_ , moving into the shadows to let her pass without protest. Flowers of asphodel grow in vases, flower buds bursting into bloom as she lets her fingers trail across them. “I know what this place is.”

“I would not have left it a secret, my lady,” he murmurs to her. “I would have told you, if you had not known it. There are no secrets betwixt the two of us.”

There may be no secrets, but he knows more than her, about all manners of things. Her eyes are wide as she gazes at the procession of souls that linger outside the palace, drinking in the sight of them. They are shorter than she had imagined, less like the nymphs who are all long limbs and unending grace. Even as spirits, they lack the way of movement that she has found to exist in the spirits of the earth and waters, in herself and her cousins. They move in lines in an ambling shuffle forwards but then are taken out of her view from her window, to where she knows not. Where do spirits linger before their judgment?

“And what do you mean to do with me?” There is only curiosity in her voice, and she senses that that alone surprises him, that she does not kick and scream and demand to be taken to the surface once more. Is this not the land of the Dead? Is that not the river Styx, the vapours of which are deadly to all but gods, that twines through the land? Did she not see the great Cerebus as she was led inside, did she not touch the animal, see its dark eyes soften underneath a gentle hand, growls fading in its throat? Perhaps she ought to scream, and kick, and demand to be taken to the surface. She was goddess of living things, of new life, and this is the realm of the dead. There is nothing for her here, or so she ought to think. But there is asphodel that grows in her wake, ghost grey stems defying the idea that this land is bleak and barren. It may be the realm of the dead, but it is still earth, and where there is earth, there is life.

And where there is life, she lives.

“Nothing at all, my lady. You came of your own will, I will merely sustain such curiosity.” Her head tilts to the side, her long flower-braided hair swinging with the movement. Violet blooms fall to the ground as her dirty feet halt. Yes, that was true, wasn’t it? She had come of her own volition, had placed her hand inside of his and let him lead her away. And he was the first one of all of them to lead her from the meadow, to show her the world beyond it. A smile grew on her face as she placed the asphodel flower behind her ear and fell into step beside Hades.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”


	2. sub terra.

She doesn’t know how she sleeps the first night, for the lack of night itself. The whole of his realm is a strange mix of shadow and illumination that never ceases – there is no true day here, nor no true night. And for one such as her, used to the rhythms of nature around her, it feels odd to experience. But sleep comes, her body resting on the pelts of long gone animals that Persephone had thought were merely tales. Her eyes close, and she dreams of meadows of ghost grey stems and white flowers. In her dream, her fingers drip with water and red juice, but there is no fruit to be seen, but when she wakes, platters of fruits and meats are laid before her on a dark wooden table, a splendid feast that she has no desire or need to consume.

She knows what eating of his fare would mean. She knows what such things represent. She will not cast off one cage and find herself trapped in another. But she takes a moment to wonder at the perfect flush of the fruit, the ripe colouring, the tautness of the flesh of each, because her mind cannot figure how this can be so. The realm of the Dead cannot create such perfectly _alive_ fruit – that would be the realm of her mother – and for a moment, she is tempted to sink her teeth into the flesh to see if the fruit is as ripe as it appears. The impulse lasts just for a moment, before she sees sense, and lets her fingers dig deep into the flesh instead, ripping the fruit open. Orange juices linger on her fingers as she opens the fruit to find it as perfectly ripe inside as out. There is no rot, no dark decay at the core. In the midst of death, there is life.

The fruit falls back to the platter, and she washes the juice from her fingers with the pitcher of water. _Leave nothing to chance. I will not be caged by others again_.

The marble of the palace is cold and alien under her feet as Persephone slips from her room. It is not warm, and lacks the feeling of new life and sleeping things that the earth possesses – it is too hard, too cold, too slick and clean compared to the earth that has always been directly under her feet. This palace is not her meadow; there are no beds of blooms, no pillows of knotted grass to lay a weary head on, no delicate scents of flowers twining through the air in a summer’s breeze. It is stone and marble, dark as night, vases inlaid with deep, twinkling jewels the likes of which Persephone has never seen before. For a moment, she misses her meadow – there, she knows every piece of it, the rise and fall of the ground, the way the shadows move as the sun travels through the sky. But then she pauses, _remembers_ ; she knows every piece of her meadow because it is all she has been allowed to know. She has explored every crevice of it, every nook in the trees, every hollow, dip and hidden place, because it has been her prison. Persephone brushes aside the longing for trees and dappled light, for beds of blooms and soft running water, and lets her mind _wonder_ at the place around her.

Her footfall is silent as she explores. High vaulted ceilings remind her of the wide arms of trees forming canopies above her, the winding passages new, unexplored paths, but there are no flowers growing in the wake of her footsteps, and that Persephone misses most. The stone of the palace separates her from the earth, and the flowers that grow here are in vases, carefully contained. _Open, bloom_ , she says to them.

There is no true sun for them here, but they grow nevertheless. But it is her touch that causes the flower to open, the petals to unfurl. To the flowers in the Underworld, Persephone is the sun, and she brings them life.

“I have never seen my house in a state of such blossoming.” His low voice is sudden, breaking through her careful examination of the new flowers, and Persephone turns to see Hades, all dark shadows and harsh lines, behind her, mouth tipped at a corner into a smile. She marvels at his quietness, at his ability to move so quietly that she could not hear him, but her eyes catch on the shadows around him, and she remembers the gift that was given to him. The Helm of Darkness, so he could move through shadows unbidden, unseen. The Lord of the Underworld is not seen unless he wants to be. His fingers move to stroke the newly unfurled petals, and Persephone makes a sound, a tiny sound of disapproval in the back of her throat, as his fingers touch the white petals.

The petals stay white, perfectly and pristinely in bloom, and Hades’ dark eyes turn to face her. “I am Lord of the Underworld, but not of Death,” he tells her quietly, knowing what her small cry meant. She does not flush, though perhaps she should. He is a God who helped her lord father cast down the Titans. He rules the realm of Death and men tremble at his name. But she is not of men – Persephone is a Goddess, and nature runs through her veins, turning her as wild and carefree as it can be, and nature is not made to be abashed or shamed by simple words.

“How is there life here? Flowers and fruits, as if my mother herself has touched them?” she asks, moving away from the vase and stepping lightly through the halls. Her steps are movements of long forgotten dances, spinning, twirling movements with unearthly grace that show her for what she is. She lives for the feeling of that movement, the dizzying, intoxicating feeling of it.

“Would you truly know?”

Her twirl slows, halts, her hands held still in the air as she contemplates this question. She has a wondering mind, a tongue too quick to ask questions, not sure if they are questions that ought to even be answered. But she wants the answers, even if they are wrong and hurt her and make her gnash her teeth. She wants _more_ than she has been given, and now she takes it with the same hands that craft crowns of flowers. Her dirt roughened hands and nimble fingers with dirt caked under their nails will sink into the unknown, and Persephone will raise it to her mouth to see how freedom and knowledge tastes, now that she has chosen it for herself.

Her twirl has halted for just a moment, and then it begins again, her hair and flowers flying out around her. “I want to know!” she exclaims, and she is exhilarated by the feeling that comes with those simple four words.

 

He leads her outside, guiding her through the strange inhabitants of this lower world. Persephone sees all, and marks it inside her mind, crafting a map so one day she might walk in this strange place without need of the sombre man beside her.

For the first time, Persephone has opportunity to truly see this realm. It is larger than she had thought, extending deep into the earth, and it is not devoid of life. Sparse crops of trees grow in the earth, and so too are there small patches of asphodel with ghost grey stems. Though the vast population of the realm is of the shades of the dead, so pale it seems almost that death has drained them of their colours, there are also others, men and women, nymphs and creatures, that stand as Hades’ attendants, curiously bright and vivid amongst the sea of pale forms and the brown of the earth. Even the blue sky is replaced; in its stead, there is a roof of earth that glitters with reflected light from jewels embedded into the dirt. Perhaps she ought to be scared of this place, of the confined nature of it and the complete surrounding of earth, but it delights Persephone. She is of the earth, Goddess of Blooming Things – the earth houses the things she enjoys most, houses life. The earthen roof scares her no more than the possibilities of what lies in the earth beneath her feet. She can _feel_ the seeds there, the possibility for life, and that is enough to assuage any fear that might creep into her bones.

She is young, she is innocent, but she is not without her own kind of courage. It is not the kind of Achilles or Perseus, but it is her own.

Hades leads her to a place where the roof of the land comes perilously low and the walls around her narrow to form a tunnel, and halts. Wispy pale tendrils hang down from the ceiling, and it is only when Persephone brushes her fingers against them that she realises that the tendrils themselves are _roots_ , dug deep into the earth, branching into smaller tendrils the further the roots extend. Even if she cannot see the tree itself, she _feels_ it start to grow as her fingers remain against the roots, her power and nature nourishing it, urging it to _grow_ , to _live_. Somewhere high above her, the tree grows, leaves flushing with colour, its flowering fruits budding and ripening to the perfect flush.

“I am Lord of the Underworld, but not of death, Persephone. I do not bring the souls here, though I do judge their worth,” Hades said, voice quiet. She thinks she understands the distinction, her eyes moving to the gems embedded in the earth, to the signs of life around her. Who knows better than her that the potential for life is within the earth better than her, whose very footsteps causes it to stir to life?

She smiles, lowering her hand from the tree roots, pressing her grubby toes into the earth below her feet. “You are Lord of all that rests _under_ the world. Jewels and seeds, the realms of the afterlife. You are not death, but the realms of it fall within your domain. Just as my father has the sky over the world, you have the earth beneath it.” This realm may hold the dead, but it is not dead itself. The crocuses beginning to bloom through the spaces between her toes is enough proof for her.

He gently takes her hands and turns them skyward so they rest cupping empty air until he carefully pours a handful of seeds into her hands. “I would not have taken you here to die Persephone,” he assures her in a murmur. “I would not take you to a place where you would sicken and wilt and die. It is a sad thing to see things of beauty die when they have no need to.”

Her hands close around the seeds. “Things of beauty don’t die near me,” she tells him, and then she turns and begins to explore. He watches her go without a further word, but she feels his gaze upon her, intent and burning as always.

 

She wanders for a period of time that Persephone has no knowledge of how to measure – there is no sun to chart the progress of time, no stars that shine to tell her that night has come. She wanders until her feet are sore and then there is a lean man beside her, guiding her back towards Hades’ palace. He is alive, that much Persephone can tell by the colour of his skin, the brightness within his eyes, but all else escapes her. He is dark haired with a neatly trimmed beard and his steps easily fall in line with hers. He does not lead her but simply stays beside her, occasionally telling her of things that she has no name for or no knowledge of.

“And what of those?” Persephone asks, pointing towards the three separate tunnels that stand beside one another. One appears to head straight ahead, but the other two seem to bend as they walk past them. Pale spirits enter them, and Persephone thinks she knows what they may be, but she asks to be sure, to know with certainty.

The man beside her does not look at her with contempt or impatience – her question is met with a smile and the answer she wants. “Those are the gates to the realms of the Dead, my lady; to Tartarus, the Fields of Asphodel and Elysium.”

“Fields of Asphodel?” Persephone asks. Her mind conjures images of wide open spaces filled with the plant, the pale stems, the white flowers and red line that marks each of the petals. What would the dead do there? She cannot imagine her nymphs there, plaiting chains of asphodel, and she cannot picture the sombre spirits moving with such liveliness either.

“Indeed, my lady. If it interests you, I might be able to persuade my lord to show you such places.”

“It would indeed,” she replies, mouth opening to thank the man for his service but unable to name him.

“Ascalaphus, my lady.”

“Thank you, Ascalaphus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally, this chapter was meant to be much longer. as such, i've actually had this bit for quite a while, always trying to get traction for the next part. however, i decided that i was being a butt, and while this may make the story a few chapters longer, it will get done - soon hopefully! as always, hope you've enjoyed it!


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